


my polaris

by brucewaynery



Series: happy steve bingo fills [22]
Category: Marvel
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Army, Getting Together, Happy Steve Bingo, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:21:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21675949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brucewaynery/pseuds/brucewaynery
Summary: "This is dumb," Steve says to his CO, unknowingly echoing his 'pen pal', Anthony Stark, who was back in the US."Probably."(meeting the penpal)
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Series: happy steve bingo fills [22]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1495793
Comments: 7
Kudos: 149
Collections: Happy Steve Bingo 2019





	my polaris

“This is dumb,” Steve says bluntly, staring down his CO, refusing to take the brown envelope.

“Maybe,” Fury agrees tersely, “but they want to see if it’ll improve moral.”

“Improve moral,” Steve repeats dully.

“Take the damn kit, Rogers,” Fury says, and Steve does have some brains under all the brawn, and some will to live, so he takes the envelope.

The higher-ups (who the higher-ups actually are has stayed a mystery to Steve for as long as he’s been in the army) want the soldiers to write to someone back home, except ‘someone’ isn’t a family member, or a close friend, or their emergency contact, but a civilian (vetted, of course) who’s signed up to be on the receiving end of a soldier’s letters.

And they’re choosing Steve’s regiment to be the test group.

The very first letter Steve sends, because the soldiers are meant to go first, to show trust, is simply a single line, in block capitals. 

_I’m sure you’re a very nice guy, Anthony, but this whole idea is dumb. Have a nice week._

His reply, a week later, starts by abolishing the idea that Anthony is a nice guy altogether when he tells him that the only reason he signed up is for PR, and that’s when it clicks that Anthony Stark, Steve’s civilian buddy, is Tony Stark, world-renowned billionaire genius. In his defence, he’s been out of the US for a while, or at least, that’s what he tells Tony in his next letter, which Tony immediately (well… in the space of five days) rebuttals by reminding Steve that Tony’s been around longer than him, and that he grew up in Brooklyn, so there’s no real excuse for not knowing who he is. 

Steve dodges that by poking at the fact that Tony would probably have been in college when Steve was born, which leads to a very indignant Tony and they just go from there.

“Dude,” Sam says, elbowing his knee, “I know you’re gonna get your boyfriend’s love note today, but you gotta stop.”

Steve flushes slightly, “Not my boyfriend,” he defends, like he does every week, and tries to make an effort to stop his leg moving to no avail.

“I miss the days when you hated him,” Sam grumbles, doing a poor job of hiding his own excitement for his letter.

No-one had thought this would work in the slightest way possible, asking soldiers to trust random civilians, spill their deepest, darkest secrets and fears and wishes and hopes to strangers? It would be easier to get the White House to reveal theirs.

And it hadn’t worked on everyone, because it was never going to, but for all Steve had slagged it off, all those months ago, it had worked for him.

He doesn’t have anyone back home, he’s the only one left of his family, and all he has planned for after the army is grad school, everyone he trusts is next to him and has half a chance of kicking it before they got back. It’s nice to have someone outside of all this, a reminder that this, the violence, terrors, and inhumanity isn’t all there is, that there’s good in the world.

War is so damn isolating sometimes, all the time, really, never-ending chaos and fear, even when they’re kicking around a ball during downtime, or playing cards, or gambling with jawbreakers, there’s still an undercurrent of never mentioned despair, having someone outside, separate to all of it… it’s something.

They go from friends to some sort of pseudo-relationship alarmingly fast (“You’re dating aren’t you?” “We haven’t even met, let alone been on a date!” “Dating!”), and shift from letters every week to a half-hour face-time whenever Steve can, and he has a reason, aside from grad school, aside from ‘protecting his country’ or whatever the fuck, he has a reason to see it all through to the end, to live long enough to go back home.

Steve had mentioned, sometime, that he wouldn’t have anyone at the airport for him, he remembers making a joke, something dumb about being a lone wolf, and Tony had joked back that he’d be there at JFK with a dozen red roses.

Steve counts, with an ear-to-ear grin on his face that matches Tony’s. 

“12 exactly.”

“Only the best for my pen pal,” Tony says, seeming to not know what to do with himself.

“I’m pretty sure I haven’t out of the country long enough that that’s what they’re calling boyfriends,” Steve says, giddier than a grown man should be, but he’s barely finished his sentence before Tony's kissing him, crushing the roses between them.

Steve went into the army young and idealistic, and maybe he lost some of himself along the way, but he’s found his own Polaris so he thinks he’s done pretty well for himself.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and [reblogs](https://talesofsuspenses.tumblr.com/post/189480045951/my-polaris) are greatly appreciated!


End file.
